Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action

Implementation of the New National Retrofit Plan: Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland

Photo of Alice-Mary HigginsAlice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the SEAI for the presentation. Retrofitting has become even more crucial in the current context. Of course the emissions reduction is our priority but we are also talking about safety, fuel poverty and energy security for families and households. I am a little concerned about the narrative around growing the market. As Dr. Byrne himself said, the ultimate goal is emissions reduction, so we need to make as much retrofitting as possible happen as soon as possible. Each year, two years or three years is time lost in terms of emissions and there are vulnerabilities there around fuel poverty.

At the moment, a lot of the emphasis is on low-income households but often that still is in a narrative of homeowners. Of the 500,000 homes to be retrofitted by 2030, 36,500 will be local authority housing stock. That is less than 10%. Dr. Byrne spoke about incentivising and encouraging people and making homeowners make the decision but the State and local authorities are the homeowners for a very large amount of housing stock in the State. Given the energy crisis and the fuel poverty that is likely to be acute in the time ahead, should we be changing that ambition? For example, that 36,500 could be the ambition for local authority housing for the next two years and then we could add to it and quadruple it, at a minimum, over the period ahead. These are the houses the State can access and is in a position to do that. I am concerned when I hear about pilots because it seems the commercial schemes and the underwriting of loans are moving ahead at scale. With local authorities, on the other hand, there has been a pilot and there might be another one, when we really need this to be the area where energy moves ahead at scale.

We have measures when it comes to landlords. We have sticks as well as carrots in this regard. I do not buy the split incentive idea. Is giving the same level of grants to commercial landlords who are renting out properties the best use of this, when we could also raise the BER requirements for properties? What are Dr. Byrne's thoughts on that harder measure being part of what we do? Perhaps it could be accompanied by incentives but-----

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